Whatever happened to the boy (and girl) racers? We need them now more than ever

Follow the author of this article

Follow the topics within this article

The car modding scene – including events like Max Power Live, pictured – was actually pretty wholesomeCredit:
David Burges

I passed my driving test in 2001, when I was 17. This was not a milestone simply for the convenience and freedom, as it is for more and more young drivers today. It was a passport to a whole social world that I’d long been a frustrated spectator to through my earlier teen years – the modified car scene.

I loved cars fervently then, just as I do now. And while that love began thanks to my Dad’s rallying fetish and impeccable taste in Seventies and Eighties sports cars, my college social life revolved around a backdrop of Vauxhall Novas, Citroen Saxos and Ford Fiestas fitted with boom-box exhausts and unnecessarily inconvenient body kits.